Types of users of player types

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Dustin Jacobs
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1 Types of users of player types kdu Kuala Lumpur, 5 th may 2016 at 2:30pm Prof. Richard A. Bartle University of essex, uk

2 introduction I was told when i was invited to give this talk that my work is first semester material here at kdu This is good, because it means I don t have to explain everything You already know it It s also bad, because it means I don t have to explain everything Now What can I talk about?! hmm, how about I discuss what happens when I don t explain everything?

3 Player types So, this is the basic player types diagram:

4 World half Those who like acting on the world are trying to bend it to their will To beat it We call them achievers Those who like interacting with the world are trying to understand it To unearth its secrets We call them explorers

5 Players half Those who like interacting with other players are trying to enjoy their company To find out more about them and about themselves We call these people socialisers Those who like acting on other players are trying to dominate them To assert self-worth We call them killers

6 gopets This is a cute panda out of gopets

7 advanced The full theory is actually more advanced than this It adds an extra axis to make 8 types so Differentiating griefers from politicians It Explains movement between types It ties into deeper theories In particular, joseph campbell s monomyth, or hero s journey However, i m going to stick to the 4-type model here As I only have 1 hour for this talk, not 3

8 Important points 1. This is not a categorisation, it s a model We can see how different types interact with and act on each other dynamically Excellent Categorisations do exist but they only address the what, not the why For game design purposes, We need the why 2. It s exhaustive There are no gaps in its coverage You can add dimensions for refinement but you can t add anything extra-dimensional

9 more 3. It s predictive Players change type over time, and we can determine which type they ll change to In the 8-type model, anyway 4. It was created for designer use designers used to create worlds they wanted to play Now they create ones people want to play 5. It only applies to people who play virtual worlds (mmos) for FUN Other players are ignored by the theory

10 For the cynics It works Gopets is a virtual world that carpetbombed the socialiser quadrant They did ok, but then they added some simple content for achievers They doubled their revenue within 7 days their achievers were 44x more profitable than their socialisers Their Explorers were 64X more profitable! Virtual worlds must attract all player types put one type off and you ll pay for it

11 applicability The warranty on this theory is only good for people playing virtual worlds for FUN If the theory does apply elsewhere, well that s wonderful especially for me! It s just there s no explanation as to why it would apply elsewhere It s like using psychoanalysis on trees If it works on people, hey, why not?

12 magdeburg This pink building is Die Grüne Zitadelle

13 borders The theory doesn t apply to games in general because it s all about identity Being and becoming yourself People play virtual worlds for 2-4 hours every night for two years Even the most diehard candy crush player is not going to do that and remain sane This is because virtual world players are on a hero s journey The theoretical underpinning of Player types

14 summary player types theory is popular and successful Not enough to win me any awards, though... However, it s only applicable under certain very particular conditions It s nevertheless quite often used beyond those conditions I m going to spend the rest of the talk examining its typical oh-dear-no! Uses And judge what this says about the people who apply it in those ways

15 remington A fight in the street

it works Their players fit the theory exactly Analysis shows AlL the different types exist

16 Means to an end Some designers apply the theory to get results They don t care why it works, just that it does work It s like a MAGIC FORMULA Lo and behold, They do find that it works Their players fit the theory exactly Analysis shows AlL the different types exist Except, of course they exist! The players were herded into the types! It s self-fulfilling design!

17 Beyond limits Some people knowingly apply the theory beyond its limits They see an analogy between what they re doing and what the theory says hey, these guys think like achievers. Hmm... Sometimes, this does seem to be useful I ve seen the theory helpfully applied to regular games, web site design, edutainment,... Even, weirdly, neuro-linguistic programming The danger is if you come to treat analogy as if it were identity

18 bandwagon Other people apply the theory from only a superficial, headline-only read of it For them, it s a bandwagon We see this with gamification Giving achiever rewards to explorers... The theory s use in gamification began as an analogy-style mapping people play mmos for different reasons, so perhaps it works in gamification? Sure, but adapt it to fit the context More on this shortly...

19 disproof some people try to break the theory This is fair enough If the theory breaks, we can find out why and get a better theory as a result Except, they never hit the target merchants! Role-players! Gold farmers! You don t cover immersion! Or girls! My 12-student survey says otherwise! Young guns who want the reputation of having shot dead an aging gunslinger should at least learn to aim

20 demonstration Interestingly, I can demonstrate the second of these misuses right now I just described four types of theory abuse that map onto the player types Means to an end: achievers Beyond limits: explorers Bandwagon: socialisers Disproof: killers It is indeed interesting, but it s wrong I know it s wrong because I deliberately omitted a fifth kind of misuse

21 Meta-theory Some people usually academics try to reconcile player types theory with an existing pet theory Quit with trying to marry it up with myers-briggs! It doesn t fit! This is the meta-theory approach worryingly, the people who do it do so for one of the other four reasons Or i guess as a meta-meta theory, and so on ad nauseum

22 Where else? here s a picture of a goth Taken from gothsuptrees.net

23 My position imagine you re a novelist who has developed a way to write better fiction Now Suppose journalists have adopted it for writing better factual stories you might be moderately surprised to learn that it works This is my situation with player types I developed a method for designing better MmOs that seems to work for things that are expressly not mmos

24 Player types Here s the basic player model diagram again: it s a way to partition mmo players

25 New partition #1 This is another, equally valid partition: It s complete and reasonably correct

26 New partition #2 Here s yet another way of doing it: Also complete and correct

27 utility New partition #1 tells you nothing you didn t already know it s not useful for game design Unless your game has physical implications involving wombs and age New partition #2 has more interesting things to say You could vaguely use it in games Minecraft/artists, mass effect/connoiseurs, angry birds/customers, the sims/designers

28 New partition #3 These graphs are easy to come up with: you were deciding which one you are, yes?

29 works That one actually works for mmos Solo play versus group play Sandbox versus theme park It Could be used in other areas, too Also, there are plenty of existing psychometric profiling systems Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory Five factor model it s not hard to take one, give it cool labels and describe it as player types

30 New partition #4 This is a slice of myers-briggs Thinking/feeling, extraversion/introversion

31 Player types Given all these possibilities, why do eg. gamification nevertheless go with mmo player types? The answer seems to be that they strike a chord Other typologies look at personality, or activity, or world view All of which are perfectly reasonable Player type theory is the only one aimed at what different people find FUN

32 alternatives The alternatives aren t fun-centric Formal approaches tend to be too broad-brush to jive with most game requirements Reiss desire profile: 16 intrinsic motivators, including eating, romance, vengeance,... Informal approaches rely heavily on stereotypes and folk wisdom women like <whatever>, young people dislike <whatever>, <whatever> attracts students

33 Confession #1 Confession #1: i didn t formulate player type theory to say these are the different things mmo players find fun I did it to say mmo players find different things fun Prior to this, designers only created mmos that they, personally found fun today, they create mmos that people find fun Game designers treat people as people

34 contribution Player type theory s main contribution to mmo design isn t that this now accounts for achievers, explorers, socialisers and killers It s the mere fact that it now accounts for different types of player at all This is also its main contribution when it s applied anywhere else

35 Volte face I said that applying my theory beyond its bounds is a mistake, and yet... I heard a talk in magdeburg in 2009 by a phd student, Monica Mayer She described a psychology wants/needs approach to analysing game players running Her model she got four stable types corresponding exactly to mine She didn t know about virtual world player type theory before this! She derived the types independently!

36 Pinch of salt Just because i m always careful not to make applicability claims i can t justify, that doesn t mean they re not true You can use a tennis racquet to clear a tent of bats even though it wasn t designed for that purpose There is more to this player types thing than we currently know The same can be said for any theory Confession #2: This talk is about theory use in general, not just this theory

37 University life Universities aren t only places for training They re also places for education You will encounter many ideas here New and old, experimental and tested You may be tempted to enforce, extend, apply, break or subsume those ideas This is all good! But it s only good if you understand the ideas first!

38 General advice For any theory, to use it you should understand it You need to know why it s supposed to work If you find holes but don t understand the theory, how can you be sure those holes really are holes? If you do understand it, you can seek to fill the holes Then we get a better theory More robust or more widely applicable

39 conclusion I don t mind if people apply player types theory out of its comfort zone, so long as they understand it If they break or extend it, great! Because then, we ll get a better theory Which means we ll get better games Where better means more fun for you And Yes, i do mean you Because In the end, that s all i ever wanted from player types better games

A game designer s view of gamification

A game designer s view of gamification Gamification summit 19 th June 2012 dr Richard A. Bartle University of essex, uk introduction imagine you re a novelist who has developed a way to write better fiction